Why would a bank customer deposit his or her money in Lagos and yet make withdrawals on arrival in Maiduguri? It is because his banking details are virtually captured; and with just a punch on the computer key board, the data could come up.
A similar technology powers the INEC virtual electoral roll. So, why can’t a voter register in Lagos, get transferred at work to Kano a few days before election time and yet, on election day, walk briskly to the polling booth and vote without stress?
With the deployment of card readers and the PVCs to check voting impersonation, that is the future direction of voting — in any case, as conceived by INEC with its digitalised voter register. For now, however, the electoral umpire appears satisfied with the merger of a digitised PVC with a manual voter register. That is the whole idea behind voting where Nigerians are registered.
But the North east security challenge, that has birthed IDPs and their camps, offers INEC the opportunity to experiment on — and perhaps perfect — that future direction of voting.
Registered IDPs, scattered in various camps, are outside their homes, towns or even states. It is even doubtful if these displaced citizens are organised in any special order, such that those fleeing from the same area are camped together.
Though family members could still stick together, and so could friends and acquaintances for sheer survival, the general profile of persons at the camps will likely be a mishmash.
That setting, though presently a disaster, could well provide a near-perfect experimental setting for INEC’s future polling.
To be sure, the logistics might be humongous, starting with distributing PVCs for registered IDPs. Unlike the present practice where voters are first told to identify their names in registers pasted nearby, INEC officials would have to retrieve names directly from their captured database.
Then, voting would follow more or less the same process, without the intervening check on a physical electoral roll.
If INEC has the presence of mind and the organisational savvy to put to test this future voting, in the present confusion and near-chaos of an IDP voting centre, it would have earned priceless experience before deploying it to the general populace.
After all, something positive would have come out of the present human misery of IDP camps — and voting exercise.
